It is a picture we none of us like, although so finely painted; and perhaps because he was always pointed out to me from childhood as a bad man, I have myself an aversion to it.

It is singular that when the very bright flash of lightning came last night while your brother John and I were sitting here, it lit this picture with a dazzling glare that made the figure stand out so strangely as to seem almost alive.

It was just after that I found that John had fainted." The memory was not a pleasant one for either of us and we changed the subject.

"Come," I said, "let us leave the gallery, it is very cold here." Though I said nothing more at the time, her words had made a great impression on me.

It was so strange that, even with the little she knew of this Adrian Temple, she should speak at once of his notoriously evil life, and of her personal dislike to the picture.